Farming 4 Life Togo - Since 2015

In 2015 the local organisation TED (Togo Engaged in its Development) decided to join hands with Farming 4 Life Denmark to start a project of development work through farming.
Since 2005, TED has been working with development having the wish to start an agricultural training program to target the main problem of Togo's food insecurity and poor livelihoods for the 65% of the people in Togo, working with agriculture.

When the people from TED heard about the Farming Gods Way methods they got interested and decided to send three men to Uganda to receive training in the methods. This was before TED knew about F4L. When the people who were trained returned to Togo, they immediately, through the platform of TED and Apostolic Church, started to teach the new methods in the local communities and to bible school students at the local bible school CAFEM. People received the new farming methods with interest and soon the results of better yields started to come.

However, since TED through the Apostolic Church in Togo had already been cooperating and received support from Denmark, their Danish partners shared the idea of making TED's agricultural intervention a Farming 4 Life project, and the idea was welcomed.

About a year later four people from Togo went to Uganda again to receive training in different other F4L practices such as how to train on advocacy and the VSLA system.

The F4L project in Togo is progressing well, with more and more people interested in learning.

Even though we see good progress in our work in Togo there are still many things to do before people are helped out of poverty in Togo. One is the issue of land rights which is a big problem for the Togolese farmers, as they do normally not own the land they grow and so, always are at risk of losing it. There are many other challenges the F4L project is facing, but in general, the project is moving on well, surely step by step.

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Togo - Brief background and history

Togo is a small country of 7,7 million inhabitants. It is located in West Africa and borders Ghana to the west, Benin to the east, and Burkina Faso to the north. The country has through many years been politically stable without conflicts but has still suffered from poverty and stagnation in many areas. Of the Togolese population, about 23% are Christians, 22% are Muslims and about 50% follow traditional religions.
About 65 % of the Togolese population lives from agriculture so, the income of the nation is widely based on agricultural production and export of cocoa and other agricultural products.

Inflation has many times meant that prices on food and goods have gone high and so given the population even less in their hands to live for.